[ramblerskitchen]

Hello,

I am very new to this site and smallholding.  I am interested in keeping a few geese to raise for eating.  Can you recommend a book which might help, or suggest breeds, age at culling, fencing and fox proofing etc.

Any advise will be really helpful,

Thanks
Sarah.

[princesspiggy]

we use to keep embdem geese, wer really nice, strong to handle though but manageable. they ate alot of grass which was one of reasons we got them. they were popular and easy to sell the offspring if required. could be very noisy 1st thing in morning but as long as uv no headache, its ok !! we never ate them but would have now if we still had them. we only lost one to a fox, we'd tried to move them down to a much larger pond at bottom of farm but she must hav sat on bank to lay her egg and fox took her.
when they were at the pond near my house, they were totally free range, they never liked their goose house but slept in barn at night in winter and outside during summer.only sold them cos our toddler was terrified of them at the time.
culling is usually broomstick method, i would imagine, and traditionally they are killed as green geese, in late summer before grass has gone, so no hard food is fed. or fattened til just before xmas.
good luck.

[Hermit]

We keep Faroese geese, very hardy but a bit smaller than the larger Embdens. Ours live out all year free range on a hill/moor with burn but we dont have foxes and the otters dont bother geese. They need a good amount of water to mate and preen in so if you can only supply a ducksworth you need to sort some water. They are very dirty and can be noisy about the place hence ours are kept away. Ours hatch late May and we kill when the summer grass is turning, that way you dont hard feed as the last post said. The meat is lean and sweet then, if you fatten the meat turns fatty and heavy , in my opinion anyway.To me geese must be free range, they will soon turn to mud any run or paddock, I have taken on geese from places where they have ruined fields! If you do not have the space for a breeding flock why not take on youngsters and kill the lot at the end of summer, that way it will save land. We kill by stunning and have a proper dispatcher, you need someone to do it for you first before taking on that task, but the meat is the best and we put seventeen in the freezer in Autumn....yumyum.

[trefnantbach]

We started keeping geese last year. I bought a trio of emdens for£28 each. I then bought an incubator and raised seven goslings with about 60% success rate. We ate the rest of the eggs - they make fantastic sponges and marangues. They layed from mid Feb to about the end of May. During this time they were quite aggressive and attacked by 7yr old daughter. However after finishing egg laying, they moulted and their behaviour became much more passive. As soon as they were removed from the heat lamp ( a few weeks) they have been out on grass for their whole lives but bringing them in at night into a foxproof shed. The moveing in and out every night ties us down a bit especially if we want to get away for a couple of nights - this I'm going to change this year with a fox proof(ish) enclosure around their shed made with mains electric fencing. electric poultry netting is no good with geese. One of the goslings strangled itself in it. About three weeks before xmas a neighbour thouoght they looked a bit thin and suggested that |i supplemented their diet with pellets. We killed four using a broom handle - worked a treat, and them hung them up and cut their throats to bleed before plucking warm. We roasted one the following day - Best meat i've ever tasted, made the effort worth while. I've had people asking for one for next xmas already! - not joking.

Geese work well with sheep or horses - following behind and grazing whatever's left over.  the only two drawbacks are they need water to mate and they s**t everywhere! - and athey can be bit agressive whilst laying. They are a bit thick though and dont have much of a mothering instinct - hence the need for an incubator. With better management I'm confident that all these problems can be avoided or sorted. We certainly will be making the effort having tasted th meat.